Want an iPhone 5? Willing to leave your carrier? The Apple stock blog Bullish Cross found out that ditching AT&T, paying the early termination fee, selling their old iPhone, and getting a new one from Verizon effectively paid them $173.82.

We've routinely discussed how you can upgrade to the latest iPhone for free by selling your off-contract device, but things get a little more complicated when early termination fees (ETFs) are in play. Because it's actually cheaper, in many cases, to pay the ETF and jump ship to another carrier you might be able to get a credit through negotiation:

AT&T told me today was that I can stay at AT&T and pay $500.00 to upgrade two of our iPhone 4S's to iPhone 5′s, OR I can leave AT&T pay $320 and then get the iPhone 5′s for the normal $199 price elsewhere. AT&T more or less told me that they would pay me $180.00 to go to Verizon. And no one would budge to fix this. I must have talked to at least six or so people at AT&T today until finally someone realize how idiotic this sounded and decided to pay me $173.82 (via account credits) not realizing that doing so put me under no obligation to hang around.

Bullish Cross decided to leave anyway, even after receiving the credit, because AT&T didn't require they stick around. While you can question the ethics of leaving in that situation, getting a credit for sticking around when it makes no financial sense to do so is reasonable. If you want to upgrade to the iPhone 5 and get a subsidized price, don't hesitate to negotiate.